Day Next

This is a day of travel. After one week of intense vacationing where Joy said, “We go chop-chop like in Chinese Army for one week then relax on Yangtze River Cruise.” (Not far from wrong), we took the flight from Xian to Wuhan then, for the first time, a long bus ride through the countryside of central China generally paralleling the Yangtze River for four hours.

This is the first extended time we have spent in rural China. Driving through the farmland with rice paddies, cotton, and sweet potatoes, all the farms are small with only the families working the fields with water buffalo as tractors. In the evening we arrived in Yiching where we climbed aboard our river ship for four nights and three days. We slept on the boat this evening before departing the following morning.

On our flat screen HD TV in our stateroom aboard the ship was a broadcast the DVD of the movie “The Last Emperor”. Beautiful scenes of the Forbidden City enthralled us having just been there in person. But I soon tired of it as there was no semi-automatic weapon fire or car chase scenes. I drifted to sleep only to be awakened by the phone at 6:30 am for our wake up call. Fortunately I missed the 6:00 am Tai Chi this morning on the upper deck. Maybe tomorrow…

We docked at the Three Gorges Dam city of Sandouping. There a bus took us to view the dam. We had to go through security like at the airport to get to the viewing areas, i.e. off the bus through security back on the bus. For all of this hassle we were not even allowed near the dam much less into the dam to view the 26 (at present) operating turbines. It was interesting but even though this is the largest hydroelectric project in the world, Hoover Dam is much more impressive. The Three Gorges area, where the dam is located is less severe than the gorge at Hoover Dam. What was impressive were two facts. One is that in the entire dam project one million tons of concrete were used. Second were the locks. Since the dam raised the water level 350 feet behind it, our ship had to traverse five locks each raising the ship 70 feet. The entire process took over three hours.

Walking back to the ship after visiting the dam viewing areas, we walked through street vendors hawking their wares. Ann and three other ladies on our tour bought jackets that were made of silk (but not really, you know knock offs) to wear to the Captain’s Reception tonight. Starting out at 580 Yuan, these ladies triple teamed this guy until he finally agreed on 70Y each or about $11. I think all five in the transaction made out well. That is the Chinese way – Everyone happy, seller and buyer.

Thought for the Day: It is a shame the damn dam had so much dam pollution.